FALL RIVER — Albert F. Munroe, who would become a painter, was first a lad on Hanover Street, and then, as were many others, a soldier.

Born in 1844, Munroe was either the first or one of the first men from Fall River to volunteer for service in the Union Army during the Civil War.

His offer was gratefully accepted, and off he went to Camp Joe Hooker in Lakeville, joining the rest of the boys who had volunteered for a year’s service with the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry. It was 1862.

Distance meant more and less in those days. It mean more because slow forms of travel meant nearly everything outside of a 20-mile radius was at least somewhat distant. It meant less because almost every place other than your own town could be considered far away.

So, the letters to Albert Munroe from his Fall River family started when he got to Camp Joe Hooker.

People wrote letters in those days the way we send emails today.

The Fall River Historical Society has a heap of the letters to Albert, all of them written in the lovely handwriting of the age.

Albert’s father Hezekiah wrote. Mom Mary Munroe wrote. Brother T.L. Munroe wrote, as did a small cousin named Julia, who printed her contributions.

The letters are slightly yellowed but not brittle to the touch, bearing the creases of having been folded many times to fit in the envelopes of the time, which were a little longer but no wider than a modern cigarette pack.

Fall River was a very different place then.

“We had a great time here last Sunday,” Brother T.L.. wrote. “One of the pigs got out and father drove it in.”

There are few pigs on Hanover Street these days.

And people were very loath to swear, particularly brother T.L., who was religious, as were all the Munroes.

“The wind has been blowing like Hail Columbia,” he wrote to Albert, stepping delicately around the word “hell.”

And mothers were mothers, as they are now.

Albert’s regiment went south to the Carolinas.

“I hope you will not stroll off alone, for you may be in danger,” Albert’s mom wrote.

Albert did that very thing and, although his letter recounting his “foraging” expedition, “foraging” being the commonly used euphemism for stealing food from the local Confederate populate, or at least locating an unclaimed chicken or two.

Father Hezekiah chided Albert for it, writing that, rather than take the risk, he, “rather go without pigs and sweet potatoes.”

Page 2 of 2 - Perhaps to forestall another such expedition, Albert’s family sent him a box containing a sausage, butter, cheese, doughnuts and mince pie, most of which probably didn’t survive the trip.

One suspects from the tone of the letters to Albert that he may have tried to downplay the danger in his letters home.

But the home folks knew. They watched the casualty lists in the local paper and were once frightened when the news said an unnamed soldier of the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry had his leg amputated.

A letter from Albert arrived soon after.

“We did not know but it might be you,” Father Hezekiah wrote. “With grateful hearts we thanked God that this time at least you were safe.”

Cousin Julia, whose printed letters straggle across the page, knew what she wanted.

“I expect to have some good time when you come home,” she wrote to Albert.

“Be a good boy,” his mother wrote to her soldier son in January 1863.

And, in March, father Hezekiah expressed much the same wish as Julia.

“Albert, come home pretty soon,” Hezekiah Munroe wrote to his son.

Albert Munroe came home. He went to Italy to study art, returned home and painted. He became a member of the group of artists called “The Fall River School,” which flourished in the 19th century. He married and he married again after his first wife died. He died of a heart attack in 1925 at age 81. At his time of death, he was living on Danforth Street.

But for a year he was a private, a volunteer from Fall River, Massachusetts, a boy from a good family who always got letters from home.

Marc Munroe Dion’s “Side Streets” column draws on his knowledge of the area and his affection for the city where he was born. It’s about people and places and history and the voice that comes only from one corner of southeastern Massachusetts.